Taking the HSK tomorrow actually! You can only take it on certain dates schedules by the Confucius Institute I believe. I have taken it a few times before and my advice would be to pick up a practice book, or get your hands on at least one practice test (they might have them online) and give it a go. There are time limits, so people usually aren't able to finish all of the questions. Each section will have different types of questions. The way to get a good score is to figure out which type of questions you tend to score best on, weather they come first or last or in the middle, and make sure to do those questions first. Figure out which ones you do less well on, and leave those for last. This way, you can rack up some points, and leave the ones you probably missed anyways blank, or better yet bubble them in randomly. The HSK does not dock you for incorrect answers like some other types of tests, so feel free to bubble away.
I used to have issues with transferring money, it was such a headache, until I found out that Western Union has international branches and they are really convenient. I'm not sure if this is relevant to redjon's situation, but all you do is take the money to the branch, tell them which country you want the money to be sent to, tell them the passport/ID card number and name of the recipient, and they can pick it up in their country within an hour or so. Also the fees are very minimal, much less than the bank ever charged me. Western Union does have kind of a bad rep and whatnot, but I've found it to be really convenient.
MM I understand where you are coming from. A bad-china-day here, and friend who complains too much there, and you've got yourself and existential crisis.
It is true, I have a lot of friends and classmate who are foreigners, and who don't really seem to like China that much. They seem to blame all the problems they have on the fact that they are in China.
For example, I go to the bank, and I have an overall bad experience, I could either say, "wow banks in China are all terrible," or I could just admit that this one instance at this one bank didn't go well. Some people just want to blame "China" for bad things that happen. I think its hard sometimes to tell which situations occurred because of China capital C and which occurred just because of chance.
What have I done, I've created BK II. I almost tried to read all of this, but then I thought, nah.
What a surprise to log on to my computer to find everything that I've said or written analyzed down to the last molecule, complete with direct quotes! We've got some real Judge Browns around here. Especially you zhulaoye, you are really holding my feet to the proverbial fire here.
I won't really say much, except for in regards to the comment about how about Mom wanting him to marry: I only mentioned this originally as more of a laugh about the cultural difference. Not like, oh how stupid that he's doing this, but like, wow that's really different in a quirky way. You don't get to many american people who are like, "yeah my mom told me I had to get married so I better get on that..." I felt like it was worth noting. I suppose it didn't really come off that way, due to my gossipy tone and abundance of the word "like," but I was just having fun, and a gossipy tone seemed suited to the topic, no? And also, I felt like it related to the entire topic of this thread, i.e. why would someone talk about marriage so early early in a relationship. Is that not relevant? And, then again, what man in his late twenties in China doesn't have a mother that wants him to get married! This is the real life situation of many a person I've met! It's not like I'm really divulging that much information here people. Maybe I am naive, silly, too young, shouldn't be posting this many details, etc ad nauseam, but I never meant to be malicious to this person or to hurt them.
In any case, I found that listening to what everyone has said to be very helpful, so I feel like posting my original question was worth it. Thanks for your input, everyone.
